04 – Tucson Flowers in Springtime

I am learning to appreciate the local wildflowers like never before this year. Part of the reason is because now that we are home owners, we have a front yard to take care of and to decide how our house is presented to the world. We are not trying to do anything fancy or stand out in particular, we just know what we like. We really like seeing all the flowers that certain houses have during this time of year. Over the past year, I have spread quite a few packets of wildflower seeds in the yard. They come up at different times of the year, mainly spring and late summer (monsoon season) so I was really excited to see if anything would come up this year. Here is a picture of a local bush that we love, a fairy duster. We definitely want to have this on our property someday.

We do not really water our front yard, so only certain things will survive, but we were lucky to buy the house with a front yard already being done nicely. There are a few date palms, a patch of succulents and a patch of bearded iris’s. There has been a leak for a long time just off of our property and so a ton of plants (I try not to use the wood “weeds”) like london rocket grew on that side of the yard. It is edible, a type of mustard green, so at first I wasn’t going to discourage it, but it grew so densely that it was blocking out some of our favorite flowers, and I am not planning on eating too many greens from our front yard (we live on a main street). Our main efforts for the front yard are in reducing the reproduction of plants we want to discourage, and increasing that of the ones we want. Simple enough, right? We ended up with a few california poppies, a dozen or two lupine, maybe 8 desert blue bells, and one flax. There are also some yellow flowers but I don’t know their name and I don’t believe they came from the packets of seeds that I broadcast because they have been growing there quite a while, but they are beautiful and they are welcome to stay. (desert blue bell is the blue flower at the top on the left above the yellow flowers, and on the right is a young lupine)

We have also taken a few walks around the neighborhood lately, and while there are many houses with flowers, this one house stands out. My aunt called me to tell me about it, so we got the dogs and walked over there. It was amazing, and so here are a couple pictures (with the dog in the background trying to get in one photo). I’ve only recently started learning about the local flowers. I know this yard had a lot of california poppies and desert blue bells but there were a lot I couldn’t identify.

Anyways I just wanted to share a few pictures I’ve gotten recently, from my yard as well as others in the neighborhood. One exception to the native wildflowers are our bearded iris’s. They were here when we moved in and have probably been there for a very long time. They do not get watered, and are very tall, green and lush and produced amazing flowers. They don’t last long and are very strange flowers if you ask me… kinda floppy. But we love them and I need to learn to take care of them. Thank you to whomever planted these! I wouldn’t have the bulbs to do something like this on my own quite yet!